2a : Episode Ten : Point of No Return, Part 2
by Taidine
Summary: Is a Coleridge poem really the key to Lyoko?  Will Kloe join the side of evil?  Will the latest issue of the Kadic Herald ever be released to the student body?  These questions and more addressed in the finale of this alternate lateseasontwo story arc.
1. Chapter 1 : In Xanadu

**Season Three : Episode Ten : Point of No Return, Part II**

Soundtrack: Green Day's "Closing Time" (In a metaphorical sense)

Chapter One: In Xanadu

"Jeremie!" Aelita called. Her voice was thin and hoarse.

"There's no one out there," Ulrich said dully. Yumi nodded in agreement.

The three were at the edge of the virtual jungle, at the point where the thick foliage loosened and faded onto airy pathways and periodic trees. Yumi stood by her hovercraft, Ulrich by his bike; Aelita had been pacing around them in an uneven, restless circle; now she stopped and squared her shoulders, staring out at the criss-crossing paths of the forest sector. "You're right," she announced firmly, then turned to face the other two. "We have to get to Sector Five on our own."

"If Ulrich devirtualizes me…" Yumi began, looking at the samurai.

"It won't work," Ulrich interrupted her flatly. "Didn't you hear Jeremie? We're locked out."

"Sector Five…" Aelita murmured, reminded of something. Her mind spun through the dense foliage behind them, along the spiraling pathway, to where the ground dropped away into the void and the waterfall poured out, foaming and crashing, into the river in the sky. "Five." Back in what passed for reality, Aelita opened her eyes. "Five miles meandering with a mazy motion…"

_Through wood and dale, the sacred river ran/And reached the caverns measureless to man,/Then sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean._

The poem was being recited in her memory now, by a gruff but affectionate voice. She closed her eyes again, surrendering fully to the flashback.

A hand rested on her shoulder, although she couldn't see the face it belonged to. Whoever it was stood behind her, or kneeled; his voice was near to her ear. "The Orbs and the Towers will take you between the sectors, but if there's no one out there – and there usually won't be – take the River Alph."

"How?" Aelita-of-memory breathed, excited, intrigued by the secrets of this new world she was slowly becoming a part of.

"I'll show you," said the voice, and for a second she thought it sounded familiar, not just from the hazy flashbacks, but from the memories she could be sure of. The phantom presence behind her rose ponderously to his feet…

"Aelita?" Yumi interrupted. "Are you all right?"

Jolted out of her trancelike state, Aelita looked up into the concerned, white-painted face of her friend. "We have to get back to the river," said the pink-haired girl earnestly.

"Huh?" Yumi's expression was a study in confusion. Ulrich, standing behind her, looked equally puzzled, but Aelita ignored them both, climbing onto Yumi's overwing. Exchanging glances with Ulrich, Yumi clambered up behind her. "Okay, you dri-"

Aelita grabbed the handlebars, and the vehicle leapt forward. Yumi was nearly knocked off by the sudden acceleration, but managed to catch hold of one of the upraised sides. The overbike's purr faded into the ambient noise as Ulrich took up pursuit; Aelita sped onto the path between the trees, careening around the curve of the road and narrowly missing the low, smooth wall bordering it. "Slow down!" Yumi called as the overwing made a too-tight turn and scraped against the inner wall; had this been Earth, there would have been a long streak of paint left behind. As it was, the drawn-out shriek of stone on metal made Yumi wince, although Aelita stoically ignored it.

The curve of the path tightened as it spiraled in like a snailshell; Ulrich was left behind them. "Aelita, we have to slow down," Yumi pleaded again.

The ground dropped. Yumi jumped, grabbing Aelita; the elf let go of the vehicle with a squeak, and the overwing plummeted into the void beneath them. The force of Yumi's leap saved the two warriors from the same fate, but not by much. When everything stopped moving, Aelita was pinned against an outcrop of virtual land, her arms around Yumi's neck in a stranglehold, and Yumi was clinging to the jut of land with both hands, feet dangling over nothingness.

There was a whrr, and a skidding, as Ulrich came around the bend and braked his bike hard. "Yumi?" He leapt down from the bike, leaving it floating half a foot above the ground. "Aelita?"

"Over here!" Yumi called, sounding more then a little choked.

"We could use a hand," Aelita added, giddy from fear and exertion.

Ulrich looked down, raised one eyebrow, and grabbed both of Yumi's wrists. She clasped her hands around his arms, and both pulled; Aelita's feet, then Yumi's, found footing on the ground, and all three warriors were safely on solid turf once again. "Next time, I drive," Yumi panted sardonically.

Aelita smiled apologetically. "I had to get here before I lost it."

"Lost what?" Ulrich asked.

"The verse." Aelita paused, staring at the rushing column of inverted water. "The river is a back door into Sector Five."

Yumi and Ulrich followed her gaze. Yumi was the first to ask the obvious question. "How do we get up there?"

Aelita pointed. "We can climb the fragments. Yumi?"

"On it," replied the kimono-ed warrior, placing her hands on her temples. A glowing, honey-gold aura sprung into being about one of the huge rocks rotating about the upside-down waterfall, and it pulled away from its slow orbit, swinging ponderously towards the mainland.

It was within a yard of their position when Yumi dropped her hands to her sides with a gasp. "Jump!" she directed, backing up for a running start. The fragment of virtual ground hung rock-steady in the air for a second before beginning its drift back towards the waterfall.

"Supersprint!" Ulrich declared; a moment later, his blurred form caught Aelita around the waist, momentum easily carrying them both across the widening gap. Yumi followed a beat behind, racing right to the edge of the void, hands slicing the air for speed. Although not as quick as Ulrich, she had only her own weight to propel over the chasm; she easily made it, turning a neat somersault and landing with precision on the edge of the rock.

Ulrich looked back at the land. "Aw, man. I left my bike," he complained facetiously. He looked over at his friends, suddenly concerned – Yumi looked worn, worse then he could remember seeing her in Lyoko. _But of course. _No amount of running or fighting could tire one as thoroughly as using their powers, and she had been moving rocks all day – for three long crossings of this cursed void.

Ulrich impulsively grabbed one of her hands in both of his, giving a quick, comforting squeeze. Aelita was watching the waterfall ahead, so he held on a second longer then camaraderie required. "Guess I don't get to crash anything this time around."

Yumi smiled back now, tired and wan, but still a smile. "I'll crash the bike for you if you push this rock around," she quipped.

Aelita turned back to face the other two, and Ulrich let Yumi's hand drop, sheepish, yet reluctant. "Ready?"

Their rock had nearly reached the cloud of similar fragments orbiting the waterfall now, and Ulrich instantly saw what she meant; they would have to jump soon if they wanted to catch the next highest rock. "Ready," Yumi proclaimed at his side; he nodded as well, sizing up the gap. They drew closer, closer…

That was as close as they would get. Ulrich flung himself towards the next rock, madcap leap nearly bearing him over the side; Yumi, touching down more precisely after a neat tumble, grabbed his arm to steady him as he wobbled dangerously on the edge. "Go!" Aelita panted, landing lightly on the same fragment, but she hardly found solid footing before she leapt again, towards the next floating rock. Jump, and jump again; it was a hectic trampoline, a life-threatening game of frogger in three dimensions, timing the leaps to Aelita's breathily gasped "Now"s. The pink-haired elf was using her preternatural sense of the Lyokan landscape to its utmost, almost trancelike in her concentration. She and Yumi must have stopped Ulrich from losing his footing on a botched jump and plummeting into the void half a dozen times, and he returned the favor almost as often, although both girls, with their precise, gymnastic leaps, were slightly less likely to overshoot the treacherous landings.

Then they were on the last fragment, and the world flipped.

Ulrich was nearly sick for a long, precarious moment. He was standing on what had been the bottom of a fragment; above him, the waterfall dropped from a gap in the landscape, and trees hung like spider plants from a ceiling, leafy tops lower then their trunks, higher then his head. A few yards below, a foaming pool of blue, virtual water rippled in even, fractal patterns. A queasy moan escaped Ulrich's taut mouth; then the moment of nauseous vertigo had passed and he was just winded, breathing heavily and slightly out of sync with the girls to either side of him.

When the rush of the climb had worn off, Ulrich chanced a comment. "That looks an awful lot like the digital sea. Are we sure about this?"

"Completely." Aelita gauged the distance between fragment and river, then lowered herself to sit, feet dangling over the edge, "Xanadu was a safehouse, not a prison; it wouldn't make sense to lock the people inside out of the most important sector."

"Xanadu?" asked Yumi. Ulrich was curious too, especially since the name sounded hauntingly familiar. "What's that?"

"Oh – I meant Lyoko," Aelita responded, and pushed herself over the edge.

There was a heart-stopping instant, as she plummeted, when it looked like she would splash down into the virtual sea. But when she hit, it was something solid and smooth atop the water, like a truly invisible sheet of glass. She looked up at her friends with a weak, shaky smile, as if she hadn't been quite as certain as she had acted. "Come on in; the water's fine."

Ulrich reached for Yumi's hand, more to comfort himself then her. Their fingers met, and they dropped in unison towards the pool below, landing lightly on the solid surface. The samurai made the mistake of looking down; his feet were on thin air, inches above perfectly blue, lapping virtual water. "Hey. We're alive."

Yumi bounced up and down on the invisible surface. "Which way?" she asked Aelita.

"Down the river." The elf paced along the pool noiselessly until she reached the edge, where it narrowed into a river that wound out, almost like a road, against the sky. With a wary look, she stepped onto it.

And vanished.


	2. Chapter 2 : On Distant Fronts

**Season Three : Episode Ten : Point of No Return, Part II**

Soundtrack: Green Day's "Closing Time" (In a metaphorical sense)

Chapter Two: On Distant Fronts

Less then a mile, more then a world away from the warriors in Lyoko, bright, chill sunlight still shone on the campus of Kadic. The school was stirred up like a kicked anthill, abuzz with rumors. Although the strange broadcast had ended, everyone had seen it, and for those who hadn't, most news channels were playing the clip with unbridled enthusiasm. Furthermore, there had been cops at the school – not security guards, genuine police officers, badges, guns and all – and a group of students had vanished, among them Jeremie, the valedictorian, and Sissi, the principal's daughter.

Also among them were Kloe, chief editor of the Kadic Weekly, and William, probably most common object of female crushes in the school. They hadn't gone far, though; only to an empty classroom, where they were sitting, side by side, at the uncomfortable desks and talking earnestly.

"I can't say I support the scipazoa project, but XANA fails to grasp several fundamental things about humankind. For example, self-sacrifice. The virus was a good stalling device, but in the long run, it puts Aelita in more danger," William was saying.

Over the course of the past hour and a half, the desks had somehow crept closer to each other, so now Kloe was all but snuggled against Willaim as they talked. An invisible barrier remained, a bare fraction of an inch of personal space neither was willing to bridge just yet – or, at least, Kloe wasn't. William was probably just toying with her. "So," the reporter ventured, "you don't think stealing Aelita's memories and preserving them in code form is actually keeping her 'safe,' you think the virus was a bad idea, and you don't want the world destroyed."

"Pretty much," William shrugged. "Makes me sound like a good guy when you put it that way."

He might have been smiling. Kloe was, smugly, secretively. "You also want to preserve Lyoko and XANA, and have to follow orders from XANA. What about Jeremie's – what about the Lyoko group?"

"They're a danger to the program," William answered, humor gone. "If it comes down to them or Lyoko… let's just say I hope it doesn't."

_And he answers my questions, _Kloe thought. "Not if I can help it."

She felt her shoulder brush against his; he looked at her, dead serious. "You'll help me, then?"

She nodded, equally serious. "I'm with you."

- - - -

Blackness lifted, slowly and stickily, as Jeremie fought to open his heavy eyelids. He was deathly tired, but there was something he needed to do… someone…

"Aelita," he muttered to himself, "Aelita has to get to Sector five."

"Easy, sport," said Odd's high, nasal voice. Jeremie made one last, valiant effort and managed to haul open his eyes. A blur resolved into his friends' face, concerned under its chipper veneer and ridiculously upswept, purple-swatched hair. "You took a nice hit on the head just now. Are you dizzy, nauseous, or seeing double? How many fingers am I holding up?"

Jeremie sat up, pushed down Odd's hand, and peered around. He was still in the Factory, on the floor by his computer desk. Sitting in the swivel chair before his computer was none other then Sissi Delmas; also, his head hurt.

Putting a hand against his temple, Jeremie brought his attention back around to Odd, trying to remember what had happened. A fight of some sort… "Where are the police? Did we return to the past?"

"No, Sissi virtualized them. You've been out for about ten minutes. We've been trying to reach Aelita and the others, but-"

Odd was cut off by Jeremie, who was processing the information slowly but steadily. "Wait. Who was virtualized?"

"Uh – the cops. And Herve." Odd sounded a touch embarrassed. "It seemed like a good idea at the time," he added defensively, "It'll keep them out of the way, unless they run into monsters – and it's not like they'll remember anything, right?"

Jeremie, with the help of the computer desk, rose unsteadily to his feet. "Should. Fine." He peered around again; Sissi and Odd remained the only people in the Factory besides himself. "Uh – how?"

"My natural genius," Sissi declared, looking up from the computer for the first time.

"Aelita showed you how the program worked last time you were up here, genius. And that's not working because caps lock is on," Odd said, moving over to the computer chair. "Now give Jeremie his seat back."

The bespectacled computer operator made his unsteady way to the chair, and Sissi climbed out of it with bad grace, allowing Jeremie to slump onto the cushion. A few swift keystrokes brought up a map of Lyoko and initiated a scan, flicking through images of the forest sector in a jerky, slideshow style. With the other hand he fumbled for the earpiece. "Aelita? Come in, Aelita."

- - - -

Officer Mason was not a happy camper. This Kadic case had stunk since the beginning. It had started with a handful of reports no one could remember filing. When she had been sent to check them out, the mystery had been compounded by flashed of déjà vu and a weird familiarity with the campus. Then the reports no one could remember filing had vanished, so the whole thing had largely been forgotten – until that blasted broadcast.

Now, after being assaulted and, frankly, beaten squarely by a pair of students – what genius was teaching kids that kind of martial arts anyway? – she appeared to be stuck in some sort of VR program, possibly the one Aubyn had found on the computer in the Factory.

She had to assume it was a VR program, because it sure wasn't real. No real place had ever had ice stretching on such a smooth plane, or such a flat sky. The sky was bothering her the most, for some reason, a pure navy, featureless expanse with no hint of where the light was coming from. It was even worse, although not by much, then the fact that she appeared to be a video game character herself – dressed in some ridiculous mockery of her uniform, all formal plumes and ruffles, with only a truncheon in her belt; not so much as a holster for a firearm. She supposed it might be some sort of joke. Kids could have a perverse sense of humor.

She was also alone. Was Aubyn trapped in some other program, or had he gotten away? If he was here, Mason could at least hope her techie partner had the know-how to get them out; if he was elsewhere, well, maybe he would call in a squad. She still didn't quite believe two students had taken her down.

"Aubyn! Constable!" she shouted. Her voice had a thin quality, as though she were outside, with nothing to contain the sound. So her ears agreed with her eyes; for all its cartoonish appearance, this must be pretty sophisticated equipment.

"Hello?" It wasn't Aubyn's voice, but it was something. Mason turned briskly towards it.

Not far away, the ground dropped, suddenly and vertically. It would appear Mason was on a plateau. The drop was a few yards; then the ground went perfectly level again, out to a second drop not far in the distance. The speaker was just below Mason's plateau: Herve, the only student who had been even remotely helpful to the investigation. He looked distinctly odd in the uniform blue light; computer rendering had smoothed out his prominent acne, but his character was dressed in green, clerical robes; he was carrying a quarterstaff and wearing, about his neck, an amulet that looked a bit like a computer chip.

"Need a hand?" Mason asked, kneeling at the edge of the drop.

Herve looked up at her. "No. I can climb a sheer, three yard wall with no equipment, rope, or even handholds all by myself."

Mason frowned. "We're all a little upset, Herve. No need to take that tone," she told him, cranking up the conciliating-elder tone.

"Fine." The Kadic student didn't sound conciliated. "Grab the end of this and I might be able to climb up." He extended the staff he was holding, a long, smooth bit of faintly woodlike substance with knotwork – carved probably wasn't the right word – at the top. The policewoman grabbed it and tugged. Herve jumped, landing at the top of the plateau with both feet; he wavered as Mason let go of the staff, planted the but end on the flat ground, and steadied. "Well, that settles it. We're not in the real world."

"No." Mason wasn't very good at lying, and didn't subscribe to the belief that children had to be protected from the world's harsh truths anyway. "I think we're in some sort of VR setting. If we can find Constable Aubyn, he might be able to get us out."

"Sure."

Mason began walking, and the Kadic student followed, looking patently ridiculous in his ostentatious green and white robes. "No offense, but if this were a virtual reality game-" his staff came whistling through the air, and before she had a chance to duck, cracked a ringing blow across the side of her head. Blue sparks cascaded across her vision; she staggered, recovered. It didn't hurt, exactly, but she could feel it, and it felt distinctly unpleasant. "-you wouldn't have felt that." Herve was already walking again, as if nothing had happened.

"Assaulting an officer is a felony, you know," Mason pointed out. She was _so_ tired of being attacked by kids.

"Well, does it count as assault if it's not real?" asked Herve rhetorically.

"Fine. Why does this prove we're not in VR?"

Their slow trek was carrying them towards the mountainous horizon. Mason kept an eye out for any more sheer drops, but except for a few fantastic ice sculptures and jagged-edged pools of water, the landscape remained featureless.

"The technology exists to synthesize sight and sound," Herve explained, sounding bored. "There are two ways to do it. We could be trapped in a room somewhere with this hologram around us and maybe, I don't know, a treadmill. Or we could be wearing some kind of helmets that project this."

"Uh-huh," Mason prompted. Not too far ahead, the land appeared to grow more cracked and fragmented.

"Well, if it's a projection on a helmet or whatever, you'd feel the helmet. If we were together in a room with a hologram projected around us, we wouldn't look like video game characters, and if we were in separate rooms, you couldn't possibly feel anything I did. So it's not VR as we know it."

The edge of the fragmented area appeared to be the shore of some sort of ocean, in which great chunks of ice floated. Mason looked across the ice floes warily. Crossing would be a long and tedious process. "Alright, we're going to-" she began, and stopped, for across the virtual water, a spare, gawky figure was waving frantically at her.

"_Mason!" _Aubyn's voice was thin and faint, but the senior officer was surprised it carried at all over the vast space. Her partner appeared to be favoring one arm – she hoped he hadn't hurt himself.

She waved herself, a sweeping 'go that way' gesture. "Go around!" she shouted.

Not hearing her, or choosing to ignore her, Aubyn began skipping across the ice floes with a dexterity he never possessed in the real world. Mason sigh. "Herve, stay here," she directed, backing up a few paces to get a running start. Apparently the unnatural strength and agility of this world had translated to her as well; she nearly overshot the first jump. Grimacing, she forged onward.

It took a good minute to meet up with Aubyn, somewhere well away from the shore. "You knuckleheaded dolt!" she chided. "What part of 'go around' did you not understand?"

Her partner was represented by a virtual avatar even stranger then her own and Herve's – some sort of cyborg character, with one arm completely replaced by a metal-and-wires facsimile and a crescent of metal cupping one eye. The outfit he wore was black – baggy pants with a drape of chain, combat boots, t-shirt and riveted jacket with three-quarter sleeves. It was so unlike anything she had ever seen Aubyn wear in the real world she had to wonder just who was picking these clothes.

"It's a video game," he said lightly, skipping past her. "Besides, I don't think there is a way around. You know you're wearing the old precinct uniform, right? You look like a rooster."

Mason grimaced. "Well, you look like one of those… you know. In Star Trek?"

They exchanged glances of companionable animosity, because Mason didn't like comments on her appearance and Aubyn was irritated by anyone without enough respect for Star Trek to remember what the major villains were called. How do you forget the Borg, anyway?

They had reached the mainland now; Mason offered a hand to her partner to jump the last gap. He grasped it and jumped; when he came down, he was staring at her hand. "Huh?" He let go, grabbed again. With the other hand, constructed of articulate metal, he grabbed her shoulder. She flinched and swatted him away. "Hands off your superior officer!"

"But – but that's impossible!" Aubyn choked out, letting go and patting frantically art his face. "Nothing… how…?"

"We've been through this," Herve said flatly. By sitting cross-legged with his staff over his knees, the student had faded into the background until he spoke. "No helmet, real-time tactile responses, and try this." He looked rapidly from left to right.

Aubyn imitated the gesture, snapping his head from one side to the other so quickly Mason was surprised nothing broke. "No lag," said Aubyn dumbly. "Sweet." He ran his right hand, smooth, cg-ed flesh, over the complicated metal and wire of the opposite arm. "And how'd they get this to feel real?"

"They've got something we've never seen before," Herve answered. "Either a direct channel to the brain, or some way to…"

_They're talking shop, _Mason thought, completely losing the thread of the conversation.

"But that would be way beyond – well, anything. Besides, what about overcoming the…" Aubyn was saying. Herve seemed to know almost as much technobabble as the constable, although he stopped more then once to request an explanation.

_So are we in a VR, or aren't we? _Mason wondered.

"Aelita? Come in, Aelita." Mason's head jerked up at the sound of that choked, guttural voice. _Jeremie_, she thought. That kid in the computer room, the frantic, incoherent one.

Herve and Aubyn broke off. "No, Aelita-" Herve began, but Mason cut him off with a chopping gesture.

"This is Officer Mason. You are, as of now, under arrest for assault on an officer of the law, conspiracy, resisting…"

"Sorry. Is Aelita with you?"

"All right, what's going on here? We're in some kind of virtual simulation, but…" that was Aubyn.

"Constable! You're out of line!" barked Mason

"Jeremie, what have you done with Sissi?" Herve had to put in his two bits.

"All I want to know is-" Aubyn plowed on.

"_Stop!_" Jeremie's voice shouted. "I don't have time to explain. You're in a… in a computer program, all right?"

"Hey, you want Sissi and me to go in there and give them a hand? We don't want them to get killed or anything." That was Della-Robbia's voice, fainter then Jeremie's

"I demand you let us out," Mason declared to the sky.

"Yeah, in a minute…" Jeremie said, sounding distracted. "Could you do me a favor first? There's a Tower if you walk to your left along the shore of the ocean, and I think if you get me some information from there I'll be able to triangulate Aelita's location…"

"Hold on," Aubyn interrupted, "get killed?"

"Well, yeah, there might be some monsters if XANA thinks – what, Odd?"

"We won't do it," Mason declared, planting her hands on her hands on her hips.

"Oh. Well, okay. Never mind, Odd and Sissi can-"

"Wait!" Herve interrupted, "I didn't say _I _wouldn't do it. This way, right?" He turned to the left and began walking, staff dragging behind him.

"Uh – great," said Jeremie. "Yeah - I'll send Odd in to help."

- - - -

Above the ice, in the flat sky, a single glowing filament briefly illuminated, as though the beam of a flashlight had swept across a bit of cobweb, then faded back into even blue. The Alph transport had been initiated.

Aelita fought to keep her balance on the tumultuous surface racing along beneath her, carrying her along. Had Yumi and Ulrich followed? She had been swept away by the strange, fluid-solid surface as soon as she stepped onto it, and trying to turn back would be futile at the speed the river moved. She must have passed through all four outer sectors by now…

The rushing movement ceased with startling abruptness.

And Aelita was alone in the dark.


	3. Chapter 3 : Terminal Point

**Season Three : Episode Ten : Point of No Return, Part II**

Soundtrack: Green Day's "Closing Time" (In a metaphorical sense)

Chapter Three: Terminal Point

"Scanner, Odd." The blonde student stepped into the golden tube at Sissi's shrill declaration and turned to face the doors before they closed.

"Transfer, Odd," Sissi continued. Up in the computer room, she sat in the swiveling chair, typing away, while Jeremie peered owlishly over her shoulder, nodding occasionally.

Odd was caught by a phantom updraft as the lights in the scanner came on, nearly strong enough to levitate his scrawny body. There was a tickle of photons on his skin, then, in a flash of black and red, the painful numbness of disassociation.

"Virtualization," pronounced Sissi, stabbing the 'enter' button with some satisfaction.

"Yup, that's right," said Jeremie, "I guess the police should be fine. Can I have my chair back, now?"

Odd braced himself as he materialized, a wireframe quickly covered by color and form, and landed gracefully on the smooth, white ground. Here he was in full catboy regalia – his usual purple-on-purple shirts and pants, four fingered paws, and a striped tail that swept behind him to balance his fall. "Hey, all," he chirped. "Sorry Sissi couldn't make it, but…" A laser clipped his shoulder, cutting him off.

"Careful!" Jeremie exclaimed, "you've got a pair of blocks coming up from the mainland. And… I think they've got a megatank with them."

"I can handle this. You three head for the Tower," Odd advised, still chipper. Another volley of lasers zinged past the group.

"I outrank you," Officer Mason responded, unslinging the truncheon that went with her flamboyant uniform. "Constable – get the civilian to the Tower." Her words were punctuated by the patter of laserfire.

"I'm not a civilian," Herve complained as Constable Aubyn grabbed him by the wrist and began running.

Odd darted for the blocks coming into view, pallid boxes on insectile, scurrying legs, and ducked between them. They focused their fire on the police officer, but she showed a remarkable adeptitude at evading them, and Odd had bigger fish to fry. A great, metallic sphere rumbled up from behind them, two halved unlocking as it prepared to fire.

Dodge, duck. Officer Mason hadn't been in a firefight before, but she had been trained for it. Lasers pecked at her arms and legs, but they didn't seem to cause much damage. Now she was standing right in front of one of the cubicle monsters; she brought her truncheon smashing down on its front, where a convex dome sported a weird symbol of three concentric circles. It jolted her arm, but shattered the block into a pile of cogs and metal that evaporated from the ground as she watched.

She turned to the second machine to find a laser hurtling towards her face. She swung her truncheon like a baseball bat on some instinct; it flickered briefly blue, and the laser bolt shattered against it. Enervated, Mason dove forward.

Odd leapt, tail streaming behind him, as the tank lined up its shot. "Laser arrow!" He fired directly at the mechanical eye of the creature, landed atop its carapace, and aimed point-blank at XANA's symbol, firing once more. The tank collapsed under him.

He turned to see Mason standing, panting, in the subliming remains of the second block. "Good work. C'mon," he said, a little winded himself. She didn't seem too flattered by the compliment.

"Herve and Aubyn have a block on their tail," said Jeremie, "Hurry up."

- - - -

In the blackness, Aelita tried to orient herself. "Ulrich? Yumi?"

"Right here," said Ulrich's voice. "Hold on." There was a _shing_, then a faint blue gleam appeared – Ulrich's katana, glowing ever so slightly. In its wan illumination, Aelita could see Ulrich and Yumi stood next to each other, and only a few yards from her; she took a step closer, to be included in the circle of light, but not much closer, lest she be an intruder in the pair's unacknowledged but indubitable subgroup.

"This isn't Sector Five." Yumi, as usual, was the first to state the obvious,

"I know," said Aelita. "There's more… I can't remember the next part of the poem. _The shadow of the dome of pleasure…" _she paused, lips moving soundlessly. "Something about a… dulcimer?"

"_A damsel with a dulcimer/in a vision once I saw/she was an Abyssinian main/and on her dulcimer she played/singing of Mount Abora._

"_Could I revive within me/her symphony and song/Such deep delight 'twould win me/that with music loud and long/I'd build that dome into the air/that sunny dome, those caves of ice – _Uh, we had to memorize it for English," Ulrich trailed off, wilting under the incredulous stares of the girls.

Aelita blinked, then grinned. "Well, it's a good thing," she said, pieces clinking into place. She sank gracefully into a meditative pose, feeling the code around her with her unique sixth sense. _There it is. _Her lips parted, and a haunting tone shivered through the blackness, pure as a glass bell. All around, light rose, and shapes phased into wireframe before solidifying.

They were in a small, claustrophobic room in the teal shades of Sector Five. Behind Aelita, the dark hexagon of a door irised open. The elf rose, turned to it, and smiled. "Perfect."

"Great. Yeah," Ulrich said, sheathing his katana and trying to reclaim his pride. "I'll hit the switch. Aelita, Yumi – do whatever it is you need to do."

- - - -

Aubyn raised his mechanical arm, fingers clenched in a gesture reminiscent of Spiderman firing webs – not necessary, but like any good geek, the constable had grown up on Marvel and DC. At any rate, he wasn't shooting spider silk; rather, a pair of whirring metal discs leapt forth at his gesture, straight at the block looming in front of them.

Odd came scampering up, panting. "Not bad, Locutious. Is that all of them?"

Aubyn looked left, then right. "Yeah, I think that's-"

"Not you, Jeremie," Odd cut him off. Cupping one paw around his mouth, he called out to the empty air: "Jeremie, you there?"

"Huh?" The computer operator sounded as if he had just woken from a doze. "Oh. Yeah, I'm here."

"Hi. How are we on lifepoints?" Odd gestured to the others and began walking again. Ahead, the Tower beckoned, tall and icy pale.

"You'll do."

Jeremie paused, as though he had lost his train of thought, then, once the silence had gone on just long enough that he seemed to be done, added, "I want Odd and Aubyn in the Tower. Can you handle type prompts?"

The eclectic group had reached the base of the Tower, embedded in a tangle of serpentine cables, and stopped walking. "Sure," said the lanky constable, "but how do we get in?"

"We knock," said Odd, laying one hand on the smooth side of the Tower. Nothing happened. All joking aside, he added more seriously: "How _do_ we get into a deactivated Tower without Aelita?"

"Umm…" Jeremie began. Sitting over the computer, fingers poised above the keys, he flicked a glance towards the black-haired girl standing guard over the elevator. "I hadn't thought of that. Maybe if I use Aelita's template to virtualize Sissi, she could…" He was cut off by a crackle of static from his earpiece and a subtle change in the light that drew his eye to the floating holographic map of Lyoko. The shape of the four sectors radiating out from the center like spokes from a wheel had been replaced by a single metallic sphere. "The sphere system just came on line!" he exclaimed, whipping his head back around to the computer screen. "Hang on."

The computer operator began typing rapidly. A second new window was brought up on screen, depicting a map marked with one yellow and two green triangles, and new voices began speaking through his earpiece. "…didn't know you were into poetry, Ulrich," said the first, tough but feminine.

"I told you, I had to memorize it for English," muttered the second, lower and rougher.

"You're a Renaissance man, Ulrich. That's a good thing," said the third voice, light and breathy; all three, in fact, sounded a little short of breath, as if they were running.

"Yumi? Ulrich? Aelita?" Jeremie ventured.

Aelita froze suddenly in the middle of a long, sleek-walled corridor. The other two were forced to halt as well, lest they collide with her. "Jeremie?"

"Who else? How did you get to Sector Five?" he asked.

"She 'built that dome in air/that sunny dome, those caves of ice,'" Ulrich quoted blithely.

"There was a back door," Aelita elaborated. "The river…"

_Beep, beep, beep, _insisted the supercomputer. Jeremie hit a few more keys, pulling up a new window, which seemed to be displaying a countdown. "You'll have to tell me later. The countdown's already at two minutes. There should be a door to your left…"

- - - -

"Great," said Odd. "Just…"

Without warning, the world tilted, speeding up like a tape on fast-forward. The catboy's point of view spun up to the platform at the top of the Tower, a ring of paler blue light cast in the sea of navy by the blue computer screen that was suspended at waist level. Aubyn put one hand against the tilted grid, numbers whirling and falling all about…

Odd blinked, and the vision vanished. He had never quite gotten used to this future-flash thing, but it sure could come in handy sometimes.

"Just what?" asked Herve. The other three were staring at him. He dredged up a grin.

"You know, I completely forgot," Odd admitted. "Aubyn, why don't you try this? I can't get in."

"Hold on," Mason interrupted. "I thought Jeremie said he was getting us out. You can't hold us here indefinitely."

"Ah – you need to be in a Tower to get devirtualized anyway," Odd lied. It was becoming a habit.

"Well, I'll try it," Aubyn volunteered, stepping forward. He rested his mechanical hand on the smooth, sterile surface of the Tower. There was no sound, but he narrowed his eyes at a patch of empty air and lifted his free hand towards it. "Weird…" The fingers of his more human hand twitched as though typing on an invisible keyboard. "Apply an unreal function… and accept… and we're in!" Without any further flourish, he stepped through the wall of the Tower, leaving a ripple in his wake. The others followed.

- - - -

Ulrich rounded a tight corner, blurred with speed. Yumi and Aelita, panting, followed several moments behind. "You're about to come into a pretty big space," Jeremie warned.

They burst out of the corridor into a cavernous room. The floor was composed of blocky, irregular sections, some higher then others but generally getting higher towards the far end of the room. "Ulrich, you need to go straight ahead," Jeremie continued, studying the map. "Aelita, Yumi, bear right."

The two groups exchanged glances, then split as advised, Ulrich putting on a burst of speed as he jumped onto the first upraised block. "Straight?"

"At the other end of this room, there's an archway letting out onto a series of elevator platforms. Take one down; the switch is somewhere around there." The samurai nodded, and, in a series of yellow-trailing bounds, ascended the broken floor.

"Aelita and Yumi," Jeremie continued, "there should be a grate or something on the right wall?"

Yumi paced closer. About a foot off the ground, there was, in fact, a panel full of vertical slits, like the grille of a ventilation system. Although why a virtual world would need a ventilation system…

"Pry it off," Jeremie directed. "The quickest way to the computer core is through the vents."

Yumi pulled out her fans and opened them with twin metallic _shing_'s "You might want to stand back," she warned Aelita, moving a few steps rearward herself. She held both weapons flat before her eyes, sighting down the crimson fabric, and let loose.

The two fans sliced across the grate, describing broad circles in the air before returning to their wielder's hands; she snapped them shut as the metal panel fell away in a pile of fragments.

The vent was barely large enough to fit into. Yumi was forced to crawl forward on her elbows, pausing once she was well in and looking back to make sure Aelita was behind her. "Tight fit," she observed to the elf, who nodded in silent agreement.

The pair made their way forward on their knees and elbows, pushing against the confines of the vent. The light was the same here as everywhere in Lyoko – indirect, omnipresent, and sourceless. Aelita thought darkness might have been preferable; being able to see exactly where the walls of the tunnel drew close didn't help her growing claustrophobia.

Yumi stopped as a blank wall reared up in front of her, afraid for a moment that she had hit a dead end until she realized, with some relief, that the tunnel merely went vertical. The first handhold to climb the upward bent passageway was well above her; she had to, through dint of some impressive gymnastic maneuvering, get herself on her feet before she began climbing.

Aelita breathed slowly, deliberately, almost as if she were meditating as she forced down a rising fright. Her hands were tight on the bars set as handholds into the vertical tunnel wall; it was uncomfortably like the sewer passage that led to the Factory, built to quarter scale. If she hadn't been gripping those bars as if her life depended on it, she suspected her fingers would be trembling. _Why? It's like a bad memory, but I've never been in these vents – they shouldn't be so frightening._

At the top of the ladder, the tunnel forked. "Left here," Jeremie directed. Again, Yumi lead the way. This vent was slightly wider, enough so the girls could move forwards on hands and knees rather then elbows, but Aelita couldn't relax. Her neck and shoulders ached from the tension. _What is it about…_

FLASH. She tumbled down a tight, slippery corridor, laserfire sparking behind her. "That should keep them busy," grunted a roughened voice ahead. If she could make it through, she would be safe. "Come on, Aelita," the voice urged. Her breaths were short and sharp. There was an intersection, up ahead. She was almost there. A blast of virtual weaponry – not lasers, something more inimical, something aimed for her – a smooth, brown virtual monster rising in front of her to take the hit – an inexplicable sense of relief – FLASH.

"Creeper!" Aelita exclaimed. Yumi looked back, confused, but then she heard it too: a slithering, whispering sound echoing down the passage.

"Great. How do I fight in here?" griped the black-haired warrior, fumbling for a fan in the confined space.

"Watch out, you're about to-" Jeremie warned.

The tunnel dropped suddenly out from under Yumi; she was falling down a shaft much like the one they had just climbed. She jerked both of her fans free of her sash and unfolded them in the same smooth motion, then extended her arms as far as the walls allowed. The razor-sharp edges of the weapons gouged the sides of the tunnel with a shriek of metal on metal, caught, and held, leaving Yumi suspended precariously from the grips of her fans.

She deftly swung herself forward, hooking her feet on one of the horizontal metal bars set into the side wall. "I'm okay!" she called up.

"You've got a creeper in the vents," Jeremie informed them unhappily. "Get down and out as quickly as possible!"

"Too late," said Aelita, softly, sadly. Yumi looked up. The eyeless brown face of Sector Five's most exclusive monster filled the top of the shaft, split by its gaping mouth. Before she could do anything, it fired a barrage of lasers downwards, ricocheting off the tunnel walls. Yumi lost her grip on the hand-and-footholds and tumbled down, dissolving into fluttering squares before she could hit the ground.

"Yumi's been devirtualized," Jeremie reported. The creeper looked up from the shaft, laser-eye trained on Aelita. The elf held her breath… but the slit mouth of the monster closed, and it executed a fluid turnaround, vanishing down the vent.

"It's not much further," said Jeremie. He sounded as though he had been holding his breath, too. "Head down that shaft."

- - - -

Ulrich clung to the bottom of the rapidly dropping elevator platform, feeling the weight of a creeper land on top of it. The floor was only ten feet away… eight… five…

XANA's monster poked its bulbous head over the edge of the platform. Ulrich lost his grip, fell the last few feet to the ground, and landed sprinting. The button was just across this room.

Behind him, all the creepers he had collected gathered in a semicircle, slithering across the even ground.

Ulrich slammed down the button. "Safe!"

The monsters opened fire.

- - - -

Jeremie's fingers twitched convulsively over his keyboard. "Not good. Aelita, looks like you're on your own."

On one of the secondary screens to Jeremie's left, there was a beep, and a small window popped into existence – a video linkup, such as Jeremie had once used to converse with Aelita. Now the face it displayed was not pale and pink-tattooed, though. For a long moment, Jeremie couldn't place it at all: dark skin, buzzed hair, and a crescent of metal cupping one eye. "Hello? This is video, right?"

The voice Jeremie could place: Aubyn, the techie police officer. _But he'd have to be in a Tower to get video. _This was probably a good thing, although Jeremie had mixed feelings about anyone being able to break into a Tower. "Sure is," the computer operator responded. "So I guess you got in?"

"Yup!" said Odd from the background. His spike-haired head drifted onto the screen. "Between him and Yumi, you'd better do something pretty impressive soon, Einstein, or you might lose your title as champion nerd."

A thought bubbled up in Jeremie's head. "Hey, can you work that computer? There's a password I need changed."

"When do I get to go to Lyoko?" Sissi whined. "This is boring."

The principal's daughter, sitting on one edge of the computer desk, had been so quiet Jeremie had forgotten she was there, a slightly disturbing occurrence. At some point over the past month, she had acquired a comparatively unbelievable amount of patience. "I thought you wanted to learn how the computer works," Jeremie replied.

"Well, you're not a very good teacher, are you?"

Aubyn looked back towards the screen. "Sure, I can get into this system. What's it a password for?"

"It used to be 'Scipio'," Jeremie explained, then, to Sissi, "I'll show you how to get a transport to Sector Five in a minute."

- - - -

Aelita clambered out of the vents with a sigh of relief. The room she had come out into was large and blank, with a steep drop slicing through it. A spindly bridge appeared to be the only path across. Without hesitation, she started along it, running and breathing hard.

_Don't look down,_ she thought, somewhere around the center of the bridge. The first thing anyone does when told not to look down, even by themselves, is look, and Aelita is no exception. She looked down.

The bridge she was jogging across was a paper-thin span that looked like she could put her foot through it with a hard kick. Below that, mist, a drop into the infinite - and, as if that weren't enough, rising out of the digital void like a baleful Kraken from the depths, a translucent, jellyfish-like monstrosity.

"Aelita, you've got a scipazoa on your tail! Keep moving!" Jeremie urged.

Aelita realized she had stopped, frozen by the fear the creature inspired in her, and began to run again as XANA's memory-stealing agent cleared the bridge, levitating like a soap bubble, and began to move towards her.

"There's a door at the other end of the bridge," Jeremie informed her. "I'm sending in the cavalry."

- - - -

Aubyn typed rapidly with both hands, working off a virtual keyboard that dominated the bottom of the Tower screen. It had taken him a precious minute to make the computer give him that, but he couldn't work with the icons it expected him to use.

"Found it," he told Jeremie, or maybe he just liked talking while he worked. "There was something pass-coded 'Scipio,' but it was locked off from… hmm, a computer inside another Tower. Shouldn't take a minute to restore."

- - - -

There was a door at the other end of the bridge, one of those sliding doors made of three interlocking pieces. It was shut fast, and didn't open as she approached. "Jeremie!" Aelita pounded on the door. The computer operator did not answer. Behind her, the scipazoa bore down…

Wait. There was a ledge along the wall, and something that might have been a hand panel not far above it. As quickly as she dared, Aelita edged out onto the narrow catwalk.

- - - -

"I don't know if we have a minute," said Jeremie. "Odd?"

The catboy stood on an icy promontory not far from the Tower. Mason and Herve were to set to either side of him, looking dour and bored in that order. "Ready for transport, Captain," Odd reported, voice high and careless. He threw off a mock salute to the empty air with one paw.

"Got it," said Aubyn happily. "This does what, unlocks the secret level?"

"Something like that," Jeremie agreed, typing 'Scipio' into a small box on the screen while Sissi watched over his shoulder with some interest.

- - - -

Aelita slapped her palm against the hand panel. "Come on, come on!" It beeped up a little red 'rejected.' She looked frantically behind her; the scipazoa loomed closer.

She tried her other palm. There was a pause, and the light blinked green. Daring to feel relief, the elf glanced behind her to see if the door was open.

The only thing filling her vision was a mass of tentacles.

- - - -

A white orb rose up the precipice as though suspended on an invisible track. It seemed to glow faintly in the blue atmosphere of the ice sector. As it rotated, XANA's symbol of three concentric circles became visible. When it turned again, it was to reveal a smooth, hollow interior. It passed in front of Odd and his contingent, sweeping them up; its final rotation showed nothing but seamless, convex white.

The sphere swept across the desolate ice sector, tilting and weaving. It plunged off the edge, tumbling away into space. The perfect dome of Sector Five reared up before them… dissolved into a corridor of numbers… and they were in.

- - - -

Jeremie's screen was counting down, next to a monochrome image of Aelita's virtual avatar. "Odd! Hurry up – the passage is behind you."

- - - -

As the tentacles surrounded Aelita, she felt numbness spread through her limbs, red fill her vision. Once the creature had caught her, there was no possible struggle. With each pulse of carmine light, she could sense her memories slipping away; futily, she tried to hold on to each image as it passed…

_Dancing with Jeremie, awkwardly, amid laughs and blushes. Odd grinned and relieved her of her lunch tray. Kloe watched Jeremie on the computer, looked up to see Aelita had entered; their gazes could have struck sparks. Sitting in science class. Running through Lyoko. Yumi and Ulrich battling a swarm of fralions. Odd springing forward with a cry of "Laser Arrow!"_

Aelita hit the ground, hard. "Huh?" Another laser arrow streaked by over her head, and she realized the last image hadn't been a memory. The scipazoa shrunk back, tentacles convulsing, under the onslaught of Odd's arrows, and dropped back over the edge of the catwalk to the depths that had spawned it.

Standing behind Odd were a tall, stolidly built woman with tightly curled hair under a plumed helmet, and Herve, dressed in green robes and brandishing a quarterstaff. Aelita rose slowly, peering at the two strangers. "Am I missing something?" she asked.

"Officer Mason, Herve, this is Aelita," Odd introduced, "and vice versa. I believe we have a mission?" He gestured towards the open doorway. "Ladies first."

- - - -

Jeremie leaned back in his chair with a deep sigh of relief. Aelita was there, the antibody was ready – he couldn't imagine this one wouldn't work. He would devirtualize everyone, he would shut down the computer, and it would all be over. Officer Mason would probably arrest them, but with the supercomputer out of commission, it wouldn't matter. What could they prove?

"So how do the vehicles work?" asked Sissi.

"Oh, it's just something I uploaded," Jeremie answered, glancing up at his unanticipated pupil. "You have to access this file and-" he stopped. "And it doesn't matter. It's over."

Behind them, there was the hiss and clank of the complicated elevator doors disengaging. Jeremie spun his chair around slowly as a flushed and panting Kloe stumbled into the room. "Jeremie! We have to return to the past, now!"

"What?" Jeremie asked. "What are you talking about?"

"Did Aelita deactivate the Tower yet?" Kloe begged, brushing a few stray yellow locks out of her face. Jeremie gave a dubious nod. "There was some sort of virus released with the attack. Electricity, computers – everything's down. It's a madhouse out there."

Jeremie tapped away at the keys. A window popped up on his computer screen – his television feed, filled with static and snow.

"Aelita, are you done?"

The pink-haired elf lifted both palms from the blue-gridded computer screen of Sector Five. DOWNLOAD COMPLETE, blinked the bold letters atop the screen. "Yes."

"Good," said Jeremie, punching up the program that had been loading since the police came in. "Return to the past, now!"

White light swept over the world.

- - - -

This is not much later, at the house of Yumi Ishiyama, in the brilliantly sunlit dining room. The table is set with a white cloth and six sets of china bowls, filled with thin golden soup. Around the table are an eclectic collection: Yumi, Ulrich, Sissi, Odd, and Aelita, all enjoying a meal.

Well… enjoy is such a strong word.

Ulrich lifted his bowl in salute and took a careful sip, grinning at Yumi next to him. "To happy endings," he proposed uncharacteristically.

"Doesn't sound like your style, Ulrich, but I'm hungry, so I'll drink to it," Odd volunteered, raising his own bowl and clinking it against Ulrich's before gulping down an overlarge sip of scalding hot soup. "Ah! My tongue! The pain!"

"We're sure we've seen the last of XANA?" Yumi asked over Odd's melodramatic cries, which continued until an annoyed Sissi shoved her own glass of water into his hand, on the theory that it might shut him up.

"Absolutely," said Jeremie, "Aelita and I turned off the supercomputer before we left the Factory."

"I'm still here," Aelita put in happily.

"For good," Jeremie agreed. "I took the liberty of removing a few key components from the supercomputer."

"And dropping them off the bridge," Aelita added. "No one will be turning it on again any time soon."

"It's really over, then," Ulrich finished. The others nodded solemnly.

Yumi's brother came around the doorframe, bowl of soup in his hands, and shook his head. "Yumi, your friends are weird. I'm gonna eat in the living room."

– Fin –


	4. Epilogue

_Well, that's it. Really. I'm done. But there was in fact one more little tiny scene that I wrote, so I guess you can read that…_

And in the Kadic infirmary, Kloe sat in the cheap folding chair next to the bed in which William rested, looking worn but very much alive. "Some completely fabricated story about the electricity going out, like you said. With the satellite down for repairs, Jeremie couldn't get the news, so he panicked. Come on, I did pretty good for someone they don't trust in the first place."

"You did good," William agreed, eyes closed. He reached out with one hand to take hers, and rubbed his head with the other. "But it's not over."

**End Season 2a**

_I thought it was kind of cruel to include that scene, since it's really a lead-in to Season 3a, which I haven't written and have no intention of writing. But I did have some ideas about it, so heck, I'm just going to outline them quickly here._

_Kloe and William fascinate me at the moment, because I had no intentions whatsoever of them getting together when I started writing this. It just went and happened entirely of its own accord. So I'd probably mess around with that for a bit, because it's a weird relationship. Kloe still likes Jeremie on some level, but she knows he'll never like her back, so she's trying to distract herself by flirting outrageously with William. William thinks Kloe can be useful, so he reciprocates, but he doesn't like her by any means. After all, he's a computer program. Sort of._

_Actually, William's identity may come into question again. Code Earth only worked on Aelita because she was once human (at least in my version of the Lyokoverse). So somewhere along the line someone who looked like William must have stumbled into the computer, and XANA got hold of him. I thought he might have been someone working for the Carthage Project._

_Which brings us to Aelita's visions in the air vents, which is also a bit of a Season 3a lead in I probably should have cut out. It doesn't really affect the episode too much. Anyway, the Carthage Project would probably be the main enemies in the next season (until Kloe and William get the supercomputer rebooted, anyway, and maybe afterwards). They were the people pursuing Aelita and Franz in the tunnels… they were the reason he built Lyoko and XANA in the first place… and now they're back. Or would be. In Season 3a._

_Hmm, what else. Odd and Sissi would be the most tempestuous relationship, since Sissi refuses to acknowledge she likes Odd – she continues to pretend this is all a finely crafted ploy to make Ulrich jealous. Odd sees no reason to stop trying to get other girls if Sissi won't even admit she likes him. For the most part, I imagine he fails, but it makes for much drama. Meanwhile, with Sissi a full-fledged member of the Lyoko team, Herve starts to play a bigger role. Nicolas probably should too, but I've never liked him much. I'm not sure why. _

_I have a rather nice scene in my head in which Kloe is sitting in the cafeteria after hours, drinking tea from a thermos, and Herve wanders in. She explains that while she's underage and can't actually go to a bar, this often makes a good substitute when one is stressed, confused, can't sleep, and feels the need to rant, as long as no names are mentioned and they forget it happened by morning. So he sits down and accepts a cup of tea. Soon he's going on about how it's just not fair to like someone who hardly even acknowledges your existence, let alone could ever return your feelings, and stop nodding Kloe you can't possibly understand…_

_But Kloe, of course, does understand. _

_Hm. Believe it or not, my original plan in Season 2a was for Kloe and Herve to get together. William messes everything up, doesn't he?_

_I think that's about it. Elyse and Officers Mason and Aubyn would probably put in cameos. Also, I promised my younger cousin I would virtualize Kiwi. _

_Taidine_

_PS – for my next project, I have either a Secrets of Droon fic or a Code Lyoko spinoff screenplay. Any opinions? _


End file.
